More Gun Laws Won’t Cut Violence

In her Aug. 14 arti­cle, Stephanie Wang did an out­stand­ing job of high­light­ing the abysmal fail­ures of our exist­ing gun laws and the absolute neces­si­ty of pro­tect­ing and expand­ing our gun rights. The five exam­ples she pro­vid­ed ranged from a hunter who uses firearms as a tool to feed his fam­i­ly, a bail bonds­man who deals with peo­ple who ignore our gun laws and who works in a sys­tem where exist­ing gun laws are either plead­ed down or dis­missed by the courts, to a sur­vivor of geno­cide in a coun­try where law­ful peo­ple were made defense­less by gun laws, yet were ignored by those that slaugh­tered inno­cent peo­ple by the thou­sands. The lat­ter sto­ry is the most extreme exam­ple of our pos­i­tive gun rights, but since Wang used it, I will remind peo­ple that pro­tect­ing the abil­i­ty of the indi­vid­ual to defend their selves against a despot­ic gov­ern­ment is the foun­da­tion of our Sec­ond Amend­ment and the shared belief of our Found­ing Fathers.

One sto­ry was of a woman who had expe­ri­enced a hor­ri­ble tragedy of neg­li­gence, an inci­dent that no gun law would have pre­vent­ed. As much as we may wish to do so, we can­not leg­is­late away care­less­ness. She also ref­er­enced the recent mass shoot­ings Amer­i­ca has expe­ri­enced, which all occurred in gun-free zones. Gun-free zones pro­hib­it law­ful peo­ple from car­ry­ing and her own exam­ples of shoot­ings in schools, the­aters and health cen­ters again high­light the fail­ure of gun laws in keep­ing peo­ple safe and their incred­i­ble dan­ger in mak­ing inno­cent peo­ple defense­less against those that don’t obey gun laws. Some of these shoot­ings hap­pened in Cal­i­for­nia, which is the most gun strict state in the nation and already has every gun law that is being demand­ed across the nation. Obvi­ous­ly, these gun laws have zero effect on stop­ping such tragedies.

Anoth­er exam­ple was of an Army vet­er­an, a per­son who swore an oath to sup­port, pro­tect and defend the Con­sti­tu­tion. As a vet­er­an and elect­ed offi­cial myself, I too swore an oath to do the same and I will not let my dis­com­fort with the exer­cise of these sacred rights inter­fere with anoth­er indi­vid­ual exer­cis­ing them. We must hold peo­ple account­able for their actions, not infringe on their Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

There are about 33,000 deaths by firearms each year, or about 1.3 per­cent of the 2.6 mil­lion deaths every year in Amer­i­ca. The vast major­i­ty of these, over 21,000, are sui­cides. Amer­i­ca ranks past the mid­dle of indus­tri­al­ized nations in sui­cides and behind dozens of coun­tries with very strict gun laws or even out­right bans, prov­ing the inef­fec­tive­ness of gun laws in pre­vent­ing sui­cides. The next major cat­e­go­ry of gun deaths is homi­cides, which the FBI reports about 8,500 and are com­mit­ted by peo­ple with no regard for life or law, and the remain­ing 3,500 are trag­ic neg­li­gence of a firearm. There are no gun laws that will have an affect on any of these cat­e­gories.

While these sto­ries tug at our emo­tions and help to sell media, the facts show gun homi­cides have been steadi­ly decreas­ing for years and are down by 50 per­cent since 1993. This is in spite of record pur­chas­es by every­day peo­ple who are wak­ing up to the fact a firearm is their best means of self-defense against those who wish to harm them. As an elect­ed offi­cial, I will be con­tin­u­ing in my fight to expand and pro­tect our gun rights, while push­ing to hold peo­ple account­able for their actions.

If peo­ple and the media are tru­ly com­mit­ted in decreas­ing gun deaths, they should be intel­lec­tu­al­ly hon­est enough to push for gun safe­ty class­es in our schools and to help edu­cate peo­ple about the safe han­dling of a firearm. We also must rec­og­nize where the major­i­ty of these gun crimes are occur­ring and who is com­mit­ting them. Inno­cent, ratio­nal peo­ple are tired of being mis­led and vil­i­fied for exer­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed gun rights, and the con­tin­ued cru­sade against our gun rights is based on fear mon­ger­ing and decep­tion, and def­i­nite­ly not the actu­al facts.